I'll stay on the shoreline, won't go into water
by Umbra viridis -tco
Summary: Can be taken as a continuation of "Between too much and not enough" but can be read separately. Castiel's got nightmares of the memories of his own hands, of his one thousand three hundred eighty two deadly sins. But Dean is a good man. Dean forgives him.


As the door to Dean's bedroom slowly cracks open to reveal its intimate insides and both of them stand in the threshold, unmoving, waiting for probably neither of them really knows what at this point, Castiel again remembers himself standing at a shore eternities ago, equally fascinated and breathless as he finds himself now. He doesn't know whether he should consider himself the fish which drowned upon learning too much poetry or if he's standing side by side with the one special fish that all the great plans were for. Too much time has passed in this world, too much time between just the two of them and everything got mixed up to the point where Castiel can't distinguish one from the other – Dean's path from his path anymore. He bitterly notices that perhaps even that memory alone is not his own. He's been wiped out so many times, scrubbed until he was raw – who is he to tell what was the real purpose back then and what was an artificial lie? He knows one thing for sure. Whatever it is that is about to happen now, is equally important and heavy as the shoreline was back then.

Maybe it's about becoming a new kind of fish.

Dean wordlessly points at the warm, dimmed space of the room, a small, ornamented with wrinkles smile resting on his face and Castiel does what Dean's had asks him to. His steps are slow, unsure, just like those made by the fish that shouldn't have grown legs, but did, against all laws and odds. Dean follows and closes the door with a soft click. The room becomes an entity of its own, something complete, alive with the guns on its walls, with the little picture frames, with the typewriter, with the light of the lamp that gives too much warmth and plays with too many shadows on their bodies, somehow inexplicably vulnerable now that the doors are locked and they are here to be – just the two of them, purpose of it seeming to be lost somewhere along the way to the bedroom. There was a point to it, but now – now they're just standing here, foolishly silent as if neither of them remembered why are they here all out the sudden. Castiel looks into Dean's face expectantly, hoping that he'll learn the reason out of it somehow because he feels like his head is being wiped clean once more. His mind is echoing with electricity, blinding light – something he's once been, but now isn't. Maybe his face reacted to the thought somehow, maybe it didn't. Still, it is exactly when Dean, as if seeing something inside him turmoil, decides to speak to cut through the noise of their silence.

"Come on, Cas. Bed's yours, so get in" he says and waits for a reaction.

Castiel lies down on the edge of the mattress, tense, the entirety of his weight focused on one side, and watches Dean frown and walk across the room.

"This is how you choose to sleep? Really? Ever tried to do it in a way that has a chance to be comfortable?" Castiel hears him groan once Dean's out of his sight. "I said yours, so you can splat your ass like a pancake just as well. No wonder you can't get your sleep shit right if you even start it wrong" Dean complains even further and immediately comes back into Castiel's horizon, dragging a small chair with him. The one Castiel registers he probably saw standing lonely near the other side of the bed.

Both of them find their eyes fascinated by the inconspicuous wooden object. Dean snorts at it almost brokenly before sitting down, as if it awoke a thought so pathetic it can only be laughed at.

"Dean?" Castiel inquires unsurely and his voice makes Dean snap out whatever he was in. "Aren't you going to sleep?"

"I said I'll take care of this. You should have enough of space to get some calm into your bones, Cas. I'll be right here, tucking you in like a fucking six year old" he says and pulls the sheets up to his cold arms. Castiel registers the scent of coffee still lingering on Dean's palms and he thinks it might be his favorite sort of caffeine source. "I'd make you the usual in this case hot milk thing, but judging from how much you drink stuff in a day, I'm scared you might piss the damn bed at some point" Dean chuckles. "So we'll deal with this in another way, I guess" he sighs heavily.

"By staring at me when I'm trying to sleep?"

"Oh, look who's talking now" Dean huffs. "No, really, I figured it's a good start to have someone around in case, you know, shit goes bad, right?"

"You think?"

"I know. Still I gotta make you fall asleep first, don't I?" Dean asks, his tone suggesting that for whatever reason the task might not be easy for him to perform. Castiel doesn't know what to expect, before he knows it, his body goes taut. Dean notices.

"See that's what I'm talking about. You need to relax, okay?"

"I don't know how to do that" Castiel admits.

"Sammy way it is, then" Dean exhales and laughs, as if he wanted to give some kind of courage to himself. "Roll on your stomach" he commands, voice oddly uneven. Castiel fails to see the point of the sudden change – lying face flat on the pillow can't possibly be one of the most relaxing things. It would demand some kind of addition to make sense but Castiel doesn't have an idea what could that be in this situation – or maybe he just doesn't want to know, he points out to himself, because the most obvious answer seems incredibly out of place at this moment. This isn't something he considered before and he is positive that now it's not the time. Abruptly he recalls Dean referring to whatever the solution is as the Sammy way and he realizes, his human associations have mislead him. Whatever it is – it's not that. He's ashamed of himself and yet, he finds himself, mildly, but unmistakably disappointed. Castiel does what he's told in the end. Burying his face in the pillow seems very convenient at the moment. Next to his body, the mattress sinks a little. The bed feels heavier and warmer than it logically should.

"When Sammy couldn't fall asleep you know" he hears Dean speaking slowly, carefully "I used to do that to ease him. Fifteen minutes or so and the kid was asleep, knowing I was right there, too" Dean says, almost chuckling, the sound of his voice burdened with nostalgia. "Course if any shit happens when you're asleep, you might wanna lash out at me or something – that's fine" he says calmly. And Castiel swears he doesn't. Those innocent words make a memory reemerge from the sea of his guilt. It's exactly what he's been afraid of at nights. The repeating of the repeated. When he was an Angel – he could hide this though beneath too many urgent matters – it did not return to him until he allowed it. But when his human eyes close and the truth unravels – it finds him without a fail among other sins that return to him – he relives – or rather – re-dies through it. He sighs into the pillow with great pain and begs Dean would drop the subject.

Dean misinterprets the sign.

"Really, man" he assures and Castiel can feel the warmth of Dean's hand radiating right above his shoulder blades, pulling skin to skin like a magnet. "You wouldn't even know how to hurt me" Dean touches him soothingly in an attempt draw soft, relaxing lines with his fingers, he adds, intending it as a joke, but below the jovial tone there is so much honest conviction it makes Castiel break and before he knows, the façade is gone and he's shaking, sobbing and choking hopelessly into Dean's pillow. Dean abandons drawing lines immediately. His hands, shaking and afraid, resort to stroking with both of his full palms. "Cas" he repeats the name thrice in a whisper, "spit it out. Tell me." But Castiel can hardly word out the atrocity he committed in front of himself alone. There are no words, in any language, that would let Dean know what he's done. And Dean keeps touching him all the time, caring and unknowing, too innocent. Dean is so beautiful in his goodness it only makes Castiel cry harder. He raised his hand on his good man times and times and again. All the possible ways to hurt and end him in ways that are so swift and efficient it's even more demeaning – he has learned by heart better than he knows the original word of God. It was all over his grace and it now is all over his bones. Castiel's hands are burning with Dean's blood and heavy from the blade every single morning he wakes up. It takes time to remember Dean is there, safe and sound. The further away from the taint of his hands, the better. Castiel remembers too many wounds. Too many last words, too many faithful eyes dimming away. Now, Dean is here, unknowingly flooding him again when he is awake, when all of it is too tangible and vivid.

"Cas, talk to me!" Dean shouts, syllables shaking with terror. Castiel feels even worse. This is going to wake Sam up. Sam needs to rest. "Cas!" Dean repeats pulling him up until Castiel weakly sits instead of laying, Dean's firm hold the only thing that is keeping him steady.

"I know how to do that, Dean" he finally admits, now that he can't run away from Dean's terrified face anymore. Those aren't the wrinkles around his eyes that he admires. Those make him suffer when he sees them. When he brings them to life from nonexistence. "I have killed you."

"You didn't" Dean says firmly.

"Three hundred eighty one times I didn't. But I did the next thousand three hundred eighty two times."

Dean seems unaffected. "It wasn't real. It didn't matter."

"It was supposed to matter, Dean. It was the purpose" Castiel explains.

"She made you do it" he says with conviction.

"The last eighty two times" Castiel begins and the memory alone forms in his throat a lump that he's sure it will make him suffocate at some point "she didn't have to."

Dean swallows hard but he still says nothing. His eyes remain determined and burning through his brain. "I killed you on sight eighty two times. I remember every word you said before you died, one thousand three hundred confessions, Dean. But eighty two times, I didn't even hear you."

"Maybe it was mercy" Dean ponders.

"Productivity" Castiel corrects.

"So you were as good as new" Dean sighs.

"Better" he adds bitterly.

"This is what you've been dreaming about?"

"Most of the times, yes."

Dean nods. "Kinky" he comments.

"Do you think this is a joke, Dean?!" Castiel rages, throat raw and pained from crying, heart offended as it were the first time he heard Naomi's order fall.

Dean makes a frown, expressing his deep thinking on the subject. "In the end, yeah. When it came to it, you didn't. Bitch tried so hard and she didn't break you" he explains. "Us" he adds as an afterthought. "Joke's on her."

Castiel doesn't find it particularly funny, still. His mouth however curves upwards a little. "Us" is a beautiful word. Castiel's heart always grows when he hears Dean say it. It sounds like safety, like an honor. Just sounds good.

"She didn't know you, Dean" he says, his simple words dripping with reverence he's never been ashamed of. "She only thought she did. She was wrong. Maybe that's why I couldn't when…when we were there. I knew, I still saw the crucial difference" Castiel muses.

"What do you mean?"

"You, I mean, her you, kept saying the wrong things."

"Like?"

"Begging not to kill you. Said that you didn't want to die."

Dean shrugs. "Maybe should've said I love you, instead" he jokes, but it somehow comes out too tense, too fragile.

"You did" Castiel says and something in Dean's face collapses, breaking his composure. "One hundred seventy one times, Dean."

"And it didn't?" Dean begins but doesn't even know how to finish the question. The joke stopped being funny.

"Not once."

"Then what did for hell's sake" he tries "if that wasn't enough?" His voice shattered, sharp, like a broken glass. Or a broken heart, maybe, Castiel figures.

"The truth about you."

"You think that it would be a lie?" Dean asks, so obviously hurt and Castiel doesn't know if the rest of the truth will be enough to stop it.

"Those were just words, Dean" he tries to explain. "Those were selfish as she thought you as selfish. Love was when it spoke through you. When you told me to do it. When all along, you wanted to save me before saving yourself" Castiel whispers, his voice breaking again because it hurts him too much. "She thought you are just a man. And that's how she remade you. She was wrong."

"And what am I?" Dean asks, a hint of hope hanging on the edge of his words.

"A good man" Castiel says. "My good man. In everything you do and you are – good."

"And that was enough?" Dean says with disbelief.

"That was everything."

A moment of silence passes. It is quiet as it was at the shoreline. There is a fish drifting between them. Or maybe just breathes. Maybe poetry. Castiel doesn't know anymore. He knows it's important. He realizes how close, how indecently close they are to each other when his nose grabs the scent of coffee still hijacking Dean's breath. Maybe that's his favorite sort of coffee, he thinks as he leans closer to get a hold of that air for a moment more.

"Told you that you wouldn't even know how to hurt me" Dean breaks the silence as the breath of his unfurls into a song of small, astonished words.

"I have before."

"You didn't mean to. Just tried to save me but in all the wrong ways."

"Dean" Castiel wants to explain himself.

"I know" Dean cuts him off.

They both know. They both made mistakes and probably will make new. But at least, both of them finally know. Maybe they will make good fish, good poetry or good men one day.

Dean changes the pillow on its other side and pulls down both of them, his arm cast as an anchor across Castiel's chest. It's warm and silent, Dean's steady breath a distant breeze on his neck, his fingers drawing lines on his back again, waves on the ocean. Castiel dissolves into it as water soaks into the shore. Soon, Dean falls asleep, his snoring a good man's poetry. Castiel remains awake with a palm ghosting on his back and an arm swung across his chest. He isn't ready to dream, not yet. Dean says he didn't hurt him. But he will in his sleep, again and again, piercing cold blades through countless honest I love yous.


End file.
